******WARNING!! MAJOR BLISSESTRASSE SPOILERS!! IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW EVERY LITTLE DETAIL ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS FILM, DO NOT CONTINUE READING!!!!**************

With the disclaimer out of the way, here we go.

First and foremost, no, Paul Donovan and MM were not there. The only one who showed up was the young guy who plays the lead, Harris Reynolds.

My mom accompanied me to the show and began visibly seething with fury during the Q&A with this kid afterward. He's early 20's and has a completely skewed perception of modern day Berlin. They had spent 2 months filming there and he thinks he knows everything about Nazis, the Berlin wall, and the homosexual communities of Germany.

My mother is Jewish and her parents barely escaped from what Hitler did to Poland with their lives. Mom was personally there in 1961 on the day the Berlin wall went up. She was driving on the Autobahn and was suddenly completely surrounded by military vehicles. Being unable to read the German newspapers, she didn't find out until getting back to an English speaking country, about the meaning of the wall.

I thought she was about to strangle the ignorance right out of the guy. He was saying that today's homosexuals in Germany shave their heads and dress like Nazis just to give the Nazis of the past a big fat middle finger. The real truth is that Nazism is still very much alive in many European countries, and those homosexuals are not poking fun at Nazis, they ARE Nazis.

I had to put this in here to give everyone some background on the setting of the film.

One more thing before getting down to the nitty gritty. We almost didn't find the freakin' theatre! The tickets I got from the website had the address of a theatre in Hollywood, but it was the WRONG ADDRESS!! Nothing on there ever mentioned that the film festival was actually happening at 3 different locations all over LA. We did manage to find the other place, just in time, but with no time for dinner beforehand.

You DON'T make a pregnant woman miss dinner!! All I could do was grab a stale croissant from a hole-in-the-wall on the corner of one of LA's worst slums, and munch on some skittles the theatre had.

The theatre itself made me claustrophobic. It was a 3 story building, very tiny, no windows, and my non-walk-in closet at home is bigger than the bathroom they had there! The room that showed the movie had 20 folding chairs (very uncomfortable to a preggo's back) and the film was projected on a wall. There may have been a grand total of 9 people in the audience. Mom and I were the only ones there that had not been directly involved in the making of the film.

It would have been impossible for MM to have remained incognito (had he showed up) in such a small environment, but at the same time, it may have been right up his alley. No crowds, no autographs, etc.

So basically, I was in a bad mood going into the event.

The movie itself.........

.........did not live up to expectations.

I'm sorry kittens, it just didn't.

I enjoyed watching MM being a madman (some scenes were rather reminiscent of "Wake the Dead") and we do get to see him having homosexual sex a few times (unfortunately, no MM nudity), but besides that, I didn't enjoy much else.

There is also another scene where MM is in a hospital gown that is open in the back and his tighty whiteys are exposed to the frigid Berlin winter's night air (holy Lexx that man is skinny!!). But, the appeal of his underpants is very soon darkened (literally) by a shitstorm (literally). You see, the reason he was in the hospital in the first place was for a serious bowel impaction, a giant lump of poop that would not come out under normal circumstances and he had been receiving several enemas to loosen it up. It decides to finally break free as we watch. Gah!

NOT the way I needed to see my Silver Fox.....*sniffle*

His character is completely insane. Bipolar doesn't describe it. Tripolar, quadripolar, etc. would be a lot closer. He flies all over the spectrum for most of the movie and it was interesting to hear the F word flowing so freely from his beautiful lips so often. He is a Christian pastor leading about 7 young Americans on a Holy mission in Germany, while just about every night sneaking off to bars to get drunk and pay young gay Nazis for sex in the bathroom. Then he comes back and cries and prays for an hour.

The kids with him on the mission are all screwed up in their own ways. There is a little redheaded girl who's so shy and meek and dependent that you want to smack her. Another girl is quite robust and develops a crush on the lead character, but ends up vomiting on someone's shoes when she sees him screwing their German language teacher (who is a married mother, by the way). The only other girl is really the most believable of all the kids. She has a great monologue in the middle of the film where she screams about not believing all the Christian BS Pastor William is spouting and how much she loves f**king her boyfriend.

She ends up pregnant by said boyfriend (who abandons her) and flying back to America (after one night of random sex with the lead character).

There are a couple of guys from the Southern states on this mission who just make wise cracks (with badly affected accents) and really don't serve any purpose in the film.

Another kid comes out of the closet and leaves the mission, choosing to live with some homosexual men living in an apartment nearby, one of those men being none other than our own President Priest, Rolf Kanies!! He's actually quite good, having a rather small part, and has a lovely singing voice (he and his partner are opera singers).

Ok, the lead character: This kid had been in prison for selling his Dad's prescription drugs at his high school, and while in the slammer was homosexually raped and beaten. His mother is an alcoholic and his father is dead. Basically, he's come on the Holy mission because it was the only way to get out of jail and satisfy his case-worker. He's deathly afraid of going back to prison.

Thus, when he walks in on Pastor William screwing a paid male skinhead in a bar bathroom, he's terrified that the Pastor will send him back to jail to make sure he doesn't tell anyone. Well, no, Pastor William would never do that! He's all full of forgiveness and love and starts trying to guide Harris back to Jesus (as if Harris was the one caught in the act of sodomy instead of himself).

No, the good and kind Pastor will not send a young man to jail for discovering his secret......he will simply murder him by pushing him in front of a train!!!!

Pastor William creates an elaborate scheme in which he encourages Harris to write a letter to his alcoholic mother telling her how much he loves her (as part of Harris' healing process). Then, later, he calls the mother on the phone and says that her son has killed himself and left the letter as a suicide note. William empties Harris' wallet of any identifying information and puts only a train ticket back into the wallet. He even rids the kid of all his American belongings, offering to buy him a brand new German wardrobe, down to the undies and socks. There is a flash of a mangled body on a mortician's table, with the mortician's assistant opening said wallet and finding nothing but the ticket.

Foreshadowing? Alas, no. The good pastor does in fact push Harris into the path of a speeding subway train (after waiting for the witnesses to clear out of the station), but he does it with such perfect timing that the kid lives!! He ends up going in between the tracks, under the train. One second later and he would have been spattered on the windshield like a bug. One second sooner and he would have tried to jump off the track and been sliced in half.

Of course Pastor William runs like hell outta there right after the push and doesn't see Harris get up, unscathed, after the train passes over him.

This flick ends with Harris thanking his lucky stars (divine intervention?) and knowing that now the Pastor will: 1. believe him dead and no longer bother him, 2. close his case file so he will never again go back to prison, and 3. allow him to now go freely anywhere he wants and do anything with anyone.

So, there's the synopsis, but what about my opinion?

The story was unoriginal and predictable. I mean really folks, this has already been done over and over. The script was repetitive and the whole thing could have been condensed into 20 minutes instead of 90. Most of the acting was just so-so. I am biased toward MM's and Rolf's acting of course, and I did like the one girl who got pregnant, but the rest of them really couldn't act well.

One of the worst things about it was that the lead character was narrating the entire film! He even told us what would happen before it did, making everything even MORE predictable. Mom and I got SO sick of hearing his voice that we did not want to stick around for his Q&A, but the room was so small, we couldn't leave without being really rude.

The way they did the ending credits was really cool and creative, but you can't say "I loved that movie because of the credits". The only time I truly felt like MM's character was a bad guy was when he made the phone call to Harris' mother about the suicide note. It was the only scene that made me feel any emotion at all during the whole film, the only thing that made me think "ok, this guy is truly an a**hole". MM could have done a much better job if he'd had a much better script and plot line.

The lead character's fear of going back to jail was flat and contrived and we got no background or feeling at all from any of the others.

I'm sort of glad that Paul didn't show up, because I would have been forced to flatter and lie to him about what I thought.

Being as devoted to Paul and Michael as we Lexxians are, we did very much idealize what this film would be like. It's tough to live up to what I'm sure we all had in our heads as a wonderfully artistic writing and acting triumph.

I'll always be glad to take one for the team if MM is involved, any ol' day of the week.

Maybe I just won't drag poor mom along with me next time......*cringe*

Goodness! I am not even sure what to say, except Thank you for going and then taking the time to tell us all about it!

I am now thinking I may have to skip it if Blissestrasse happens to somehow show up here in Denver!

P.S. You and your Mom are both very kind considering you did not slap that kid in the face after his commentary about Germany. (I lived there for several years and half of my Best Friend's lives outside of Berlin... and we visit as often as we can). I probably would have smacked him... given the opportunity.

____________________What other people think of me, is none of my business.

Ah, I am sorry squish for all that hell you went through. I am sorry for the letdown. How messed up they f* cked up on the address and you had to go hungry. We have all been pregnant at one point and we feel for you our dear squish. There is nothing more scary on this earth then a hungry disappointed pregnant woman.

Maya, if you get a wind on a few answers to what MM thought of this project. Would make us more enlighten to what he thought. Did he to think it a bust?

we all deeply thank you once again for the efforts made by you and your mom.

____________________~I would make a very bad killer in real life because I don't think I could even pick up a gun, much less actually shoot one. Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.~ Christopher Walken

Ah, my dear, I'm sure Bilbo and a few other Lexxians here would disagree (hopefully) with the idea that we have ALL been pregnant. At least we can say that we've all KNOWN somebody who was pregnant, if it wasn't us ourselves.

And Maya,

I second the motion that we'd love to know what MM himself thought of this film. You certainly don't need to bug him about it, but if he ever offers any thoughts on the matter, please pass them on.

Oh, and don't let him read my review PLEASE. I'd be embarrassed enough to throw MYSELF in front of a German subway train.....

To all we have been pregnant was for all the female members and to their gf,wive, or a sister, or any other female they know. I am sorry for the wording I thought it was self explanatory that the guys would know its not directed towards them. After all bilbo the other male members on lexxverse are very smart and know it wasn't towards them so yeah.

____________________~I would make a very bad killer in real life because I don't think I could even pick up a gun, much less actually shoot one. Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.~ Christopher Walken